How to begin?

LRap2

LRap2

New member
I recently graduated college and during my four years away at school, I gained 30 pounds over all. I have been in a rut lately, feeling sorry for myself, disgusted and depressed. I am excited to find a job and begin a career but would like to feel more healthy, and confident.

I have been eating healthier the last three to four months but lacking activity. Personally, I need some guidance, someone to tell me exactly what I need to do to get the push. I do not know what to eat or how much to eat. I know portion control is hard for me. What are good snacks? What are decent meals? I love cooking, I love pasta, rice, bread, cheese... all the things the should be eliminating. What should my menu look like?

:banghead:

How much should I exercise? What strength exercises should I be doing?

Thanks!

Height: 5'2
Current: 164 lbs
Goal: 130 lbs
 
Well first of all, I'd say get the whole "I should be eliminating" thing out of your mind. That whole "all or nothing" and forbidding yourself foods you love is a sure way to make sure that you feel deprived and punished and to give up.

Moderation is the name of the game. Healthy foods in healthy amounts with a treat of your favorite things now and then.

Read the stickies that are posted in the various parts of the boards. There's a lot of good information there on nutrition and exercise.

I'd also recommend that you sign up with something like thedailyplate.com or fitday.com to help you track your calories and your nutrients. Knowing how much you currently eat and where you can cut back and/or change is important.
 
You sound a bit like me. I often feel like if someone layed out everything I need to eat
and listed every exercise I need to do and for how long and how much then I could let go
of my food habits and let someone else take charge and guide me through.
Till I could form proper food habits and make right decisions for myself obviously.
Have you considered hiring a nutritionist and personal trainer? Or even a lifecoach?
It would be expensive depending how much you'd want them to be involved in your life and choices you make.
I went to a nutritionist two years ago and she made meal plans for me for a week to follow. So she listed out options for me for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and wrote out how many calories I should get from each meals and how many cals I should aim to eat in the day. It was great! Didn't work out for me but you may find it useful.
 
Oh and on a side note - there are heaps of websites floating around that help you figure out the average amount of calories a person of your weight/height/gender should be eating. Once you have a rough figure, browse websites for recipes that list the calories and then plan your meals and calorie intake. You can also use websites to figure out what you burn from every kind of exercise. So long as you have a calorie deficiency you will lose weight. It's amazing what you can learn just flicking through websites!
 
weight loss ideas

Here are some easy and fast weight loss ideas:

* Make water your favorite drink. A person must have a minimum of 8 glasses of water in a day. Avoid taking soft drinks or carbonated beverages; moreover replace them with water. Water helps in reducing weight in the most effective manner.
* Don't stuff yourself with food in a single sitting; instead have 5 to 6 small meals or snacks in a day. Eating several small meals helps the body to release less insulin, which keeps blood sugar steady and helps to control hunger.
* Make a habit of walking. Instead of driving car to the nearby market, prefer walking down. Walking is more important for people in sedentary jobs. Walk for at least 45 minutes every day; it helps in burning extra calories.
* Keep small plates for serving food because a study shows that the less food put in front of us, the less food we'll eat. So downsize your food plates and coffee mugs, and say goodbye to those extra calories.
* Eat more vegetables during meals as water-rich foods like zucchini, tomatoes, and cucumbers reduce your overall calorie consumption. Some other water-rich foods include soups and salads; they are good source of nutrition.
* Use vegetables to make hefty meals. Like pasta salad loaded with vegetables like broccoli, carrots, and tomatoes can be eaten twice. Same applies for stir-fries; add vegetables to make a fluffier omelet.
* Avoid taking white foods as they contain large amounts of carbohydrates, which may further lead to weight gain. Replace white sugar, white rice, and white flour with whole grain breads and brown rice.
* Switch to ordinary coffee because coffee drinks at shops has extra calories, owing to whole milk, whipped cream, sugar, and sugary syrups. A cup of regular coffee, having skim milk brewed with good beans, tastes great and moreover has fewer calories.
* Use skimmed milk as it is high in calcium and low in calories. For coffee, use nonfat powdered milk.
* Prefer eating cereal for breakfast five days a week. Following this, you will consume more fiber and calcium, and less fat than those who eat other breakfast foods.
* Prefer having meals at home. We're more likely to eat more - in fact, more high-fat, and high-calorie foods- when we eat out than eating at home.
* Try to eat slowly and put your fork or spoon down after every bite. Drink water often and talk about your day with your partner. If you eat slowly, you would feel contended with your meal.
 
just to pick up on one of your points i would suggest not consuming non-fat powdered milk etc as it is largely made up of oxidised cholesterol to give the product body and taste. this is the same with non fat milk, they add oxidised cholsterol for flavour cause all the flavour disappears once the fat is completely removed. Ben
 
It's easy to let that "commitment lightbulb" hit anybody... the problem comes in when we lose focus on that commitment.

From my experience, it worked really well that I had people in my home who knew of my weight loss goals and supported me at each difficult step. Journey journalling also gave me a good push in starting with small steps to achieve my goals. These two didn't only give me a good kickstart, but it helped a LOT with staying committed to the goal.
 
Ben Coomber said:
just to pick up on one of your points i would suggest not consuming non-fat powdered milk etc as it is largely made up of oxidised cholesterol to give the product body and taste. this is the same with non fat milk, they add oxidised cholsterol for flavour cause all the flavour disappears once the fat is completely removed. Ben
Click to expand...

this seemed hocus to me so i looked into it a bit further. turns out i was right, it's incorrect
 
reading the article the guy said there was oxidised cholesterol in the milk, but said the amounts were not in high enough proportions to cause harm. i personally would not like to consume disease producing oxidised cholesterol in any amounts.

this would probably not be a problem if there was not oxidised cholesterol etc alredy in ones system, but would be a problem if there is especially if the person in question had internal inflammation, this would then be a problem as the oxidised cholesterol would then be used as part of the anti-inflammatory process.

an article that talks about many aspects of milk:


personally i would not like to consume oxidised cholesterol in any amounts. and if you use the powdered milk in one cup of coffee a day then cool, but what if you have 6-8 cups of coffee a day, the ball game then changes with the amount of oxidised cholesterol comsumed. either way its in there and he said so himself.
 
Jynus said:
this seemed hocus to me so i looked into it a bit further. turns out i was right, it's incorrect
Click to expand...

Same as most of what he says. Someone has an agenda and an axe to grind. I suspect it a matter of trying to drum up sales through mis-information, or maybe he's twit enough to just believe almost anything. Either way I wish he'd either crawl under a rock or just slide back through the hole in the fence that let him in, instead of clogging up the board with trash.

<3 ya Ben
 
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